


Half-State

by Comet360



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bad Decisions, Cancer, Dreams and Nightmares, Drug Use, M/M, Magic, POV Second Person, Panic Attacks, Underage Drinking, Unreliable Narrator, Vandalism, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-14
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 08:49:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2303798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comet360/pseuds/Comet360
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with an ache in your bones and escalates from there.</p><p>According to Kübler-Ross there are five stages of accepting terminal illness. You experience denial, anger and bouts of depression but you know better than to try bargaining and you never do reach acceptance before the end. </p><p>You were always your worst when backed into a corner. A story about bad decisions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

.

.

You don’t need to go to a doctor for confirmation. You know it in your bones. You know it’s in your bones.

You don’t need to, but you do anyway; you know what’s wrong with you but you don’t know _enough_. Curiosity has always been your undoing.

.

.

Your chair falls over as you stand up and stumble backwards. The sound echoes in your ears along with whatever excuses you stammer out. It takes three attempts before your fumbling hand can get the doorknob. You run.

The white walls of the hospital close in on you. Your breaths come shorter and faster but no matter how you try you can’t get enough air. The edges of your vision blur. All you want to do is escape but every corridor is identical giving the illusion that you’re not going anywhere. It feels like dying, like breaking apart.

You can hear Ms Morrell’s voice in your head, cool and collected and everything you are not. _If it’s about survival, isn’t a little agony worth it?_ But that’s just the thing – this time it isn’t about survival, it’s about the opposite.

You keep running. _If you’re going through hell, keep going_ , Ms Morrell says in your memory. You let a sound that is somewhere between a snarl and a sob.

Bursting out the front entrance of the hospital feels a bit like waking from a nightmare or surfacing from the water after nearly drowning. Suddenly all the colour rushes back into the world and you can hear again. Time resumes its steady march forwards. You fall to your knees, press your forehead to the ground, twist your hands into the cold grass and dig your fingers into the earth. It’s not enough to anchor you. Your heart still feels like it’s trying to beat its way out of your chest and no matter how you try you can’t control the frantic gulps of fresh air you’re sucking in.

There are breathing patterns you’re supposed to practise when this happens and thank God they’re familiar enough that you start counting your breaths automatically because you can’t think like this. Your brain is racing down hundred pathways at once, looping around and switching between them, unable to follow a single thought to its conclusion. You’re falling to pieces.

_One, two, thr—_ you blow out a breath, unable to hold it any longer. In again and out, quick gasps before you can try to regulate them, in-out, in-out. _One—_ and you can’t do it. You can’t. You need your dad, or Scott; they know how to coach you through this. You need Lydia, need her kiss to save you.

“Hey kid, you alright?” you hear someone ask.

_Kid,_ you think hysterically. _I’m just a kid_. Out loud you say, “Peachy.” It sounds strangled enough that you’re not sure it’s even comprehensible so you lift your hand to wave them away.

You can’t stay here. You force yourself to your feet, staggering like a drunk. There’s a concerned-looking man in front of you and you clumsily pat him on the shoulder and you stumble past. Your hands are shaking.

How you make it to the carpark is a complete mystery but it probably has something to do with the number of times you’ve been here before. It’s a good thing you have such an easily recognisable car because you can’t for the life of you recall where you parked it. You slump against the familiar blue metal and slide to the ground. With your head tilted up to the sky and your faithful jeep to your back, you feel like you might finally be able to get the oxygen you so desperately crave.

Inhale slowly, counting to five, then exhale for two beats. Inhale. _One, two, three, four, five_. Exhale. _One, two_. Inhale. _One, two, three, four, five_. Exhale. _One, two_. Inhale. _One, two, three, four, five_.

Slowly, you come back to yourself. You’re not okay, not by a long shot, but at least you can breathe again.

Without the all-consuming need for air overriding everything else you’re left drained and miserable. Nausea rolls in your stomach. You’re covered with sweat and wracked with chills. You want to go home but even if you weren’t toeing the edge of hysteria, you’re still shaking like a leaf and there’s a tingling numbness in your extremities. You can’t drive like this. You want to call your dad, or Scott – maybe both – but you don’t know how to face them.

You close your eyes, but it doesn’t make anything better so you open them again. Staring up at the wide open sky you take a moment to just exist, your brain mercifully silent for once in your life. This has been the worst attack you’ve had since the first one when you had no idea what was happening and couldn’t even get enough air to call for your dad.

It shouldn’t have been so bad. You knew this was coming; you would’ve been more surprised if the results or all their tests had come back clear. But deep down you’d been hoping against all hope that you were wrong. You didn’t want to believe what you suspected was true. You’d wanted them to tell you that you were wrong, that access to Google didn’t make you a doctor.

You _were_ wrong, but not in the way you’d wanted; it was worse than you’d imagined.

It’s not just in your bones. It’s in your lungs and your liver too. It’s in your spleen, and your adrenal glands, invading and taking over your body one organ at a time. The prognosis doesn’t include a likelihood of survival, just an estimate of how much longer you have on your clock.

There are options, you were told, treatments, ways they can slow it down. Your doctor had smiled with a professional mix of sympathy and encouragement and told you that if you responded well, you might even have up to two years.

But two years or two months or two hours, it’s still a death sentence.

Inhale. _One, two, three, four, five_. Exhale. _One, two_. Inhale. _One, two, three, four, five_.

Two women walk past arguing tersely in hissed whispers; you seen them in the corner of your eye, hear them start and abruptly cut off mid word when they notice you. They only pause for a moment though. This is a hospital – you are all caught up in your own tragedies.

.

.

You’ve stared death in the eye before. You’ve had claws at your throat and a gun to your head. You’ve been held under water until your heart stopped beating, until your body stilled and your breath slipped away. You stayed that way for 16 hours. One for every year of your life, you’d thought at the time. You’ve fought to live, and begged to die. You’ve told yourself you’d survive if you just kept treading water for one more minute, just one more, always one more.

You’ve stared death in the eye before. This is no different.

.

.

The house is dark and silent when you get home; it’s a Tuesday which means your father is working late. You’d planned it that way. All of your appointments have been on Tuesday afternoons so that your dad won’t notice you missing and to give yourself time alone to get it together before you have to face anyone.

It’s working against you now though. You’re stuck in your own head, shaken and weak from your earlier panic attack. All your strength and bravery has run out and you need someone, anyone.

You call Scott first but it runs to voicemail, of course it does because Scott never fucking picks up the phone when you need him the most.

Your dad is next but he doesn’t pick up either. That’s right, you remember. He’s in a meeting. Tuesday afternoons are for meetings. It’s why you’re here, alone, in this shrine to your mother. Will your father leave all of your things as they are when you’re gone, as you’d insisted on doing with your mother’s belongings? A silent imprint that slowly fades as it becomes impractical to maintain. Or, allowed to grieve any way he chooses, will he want to box everything up and hide the memories away? Don’t think about it, you tell yourself.

Lydia will pick up. She’s always on her phone. You dial again, fingers blindly stabbing at numbers that blur and waver, smearing drops of liquid across the screen of your phone and making it impossible to select anything. Finally you give up, throwing the useless piece of metal and plastic across the room and sinking your head into your hands and crying and crying and crying.

How are you going to tell your dad? Scenarios run through your mind, each more disastrous than the last and you just don’t know. It hits you that this might be the last time your dad is happy. After this he’s going to have months of watching you die, every second reminding him of what the both of you already went through with your mother, and then you’ll be _gone_.

You’re not naive enough to believe it won’t kill him.

After everything that’s happened between you and your father, not just since Scott was bitten but from all the way back when your mother died and he was drowning in his own sorrow and you were acting out and neither of you knew how to deal with the other – haven’t you caused him enough trouble? Haven’t you destroyed him enough already?

You try to pull yourself together. You’ve done this before. If you’ve learned one thing since Scott was bitten it’s that the earth doesn’t stop turning because you’re in over your head. Just because somebody told you you’re going to die sometime in the hazy future doesn’t mean you don’t have a half-finished English essay due tomorrow or Chemistry homework to do. Two years is a lifetime in Beacon Hills – a wendigo will probably get you before you see the end of this year.

It’s not much of a comforting thought.

Eventually your hiccoughing breaths smooth out and your tears dry up. Nothing lasts forever, you think morbidly. From where you sit at the kitchen table you can see the faint pencil lines on the doorframe that mark how tall you were on each of your birthdays. They will linger here long after you’ve left this earth. Evidence of a child that lived and grew up in this house, a hint of what once was like fossils left in rock and arrowheads scattered across camps long abandoned.

The last light of the setting sun slips away while you sit there, lost in thought. The darkness is like a comforting blanket in the familiarity of your own home. Like this you can pretend the rest of the world doesn’t exist. But you can’t stay here forever. Soon your dad will come home and you don’t want him to find you like this.

You go to the bathroom and splash water on your face, look at your reflection in the mirror and remind yourself nothing’s changed; your lifespan was measured in months yesterday too, you just didn’t know it. _Hold it together, Stilinski_ , you think. _Give your father one last good evening to remember you by._

.

In the end you go to bed before your father gets home. You don’t do your essay or your homework. You’re drained in every sense of the word and you just want to forget everything about your life right now.

On your bedside table your recovered phone blinks with three missed calls from Scott that you deliberately ignored.

.

You wake up late the next day. One look at the time through sleep encrusted eyes has you yelping and leaping out of bed only to fall on your face, feet tangled in your sheets. You throw all your books in your bag, no time to check your schedule to see what classes you have on today, and grab an apple as you run through the kitchen, rummaging in your pockets for your keys.

It’s only halfway to school that your stomach drops and you remember why you woke up feeling like you’d just gotten over a really bad cold. You’ve stared death in the eye before, you remind yourself. This is no different. It isn’t.

Scott’s waiting for you at school, and when you see him you grin and say, “What’s up, Scotty-boy?” because you don’t know how to say, “I’ve got cancer.”

He grins at you, fading worry in his eyes and says, "Stiles, hey. What happened yesterday? I couldn't get a hold of you."

"It's nothing," you say. "I went to sleep early. Didn't mean to cause any undue panic."

Scott laughs at your teasing tone though the both of you know it's no joke. Too much has happened, too many people you've cared about have been lost in the past year or so for either of you to find it funny. Guilt pangs in your chest. Soon Scott will have to add your name to that list.

You have to tell him. He's your best friend. It's not right to hide something like this from him.

Except that Scott is laughing and so are you.  _Everything is fine_ , you tell yourself.  _Everything is normal. It's all good_.

You don't believe your own lies but you want to.

A year ago you could’ve never kept a secret like this from Scott but a lot has happened in the past year and you’re a far cry from that naive child now. Secrets and death are your bread and butter.

“You’re my best buddy,” you tell Scott at lunch.

He squints at you and says, “You’re being weird.”

“Lies and slander,” you declare, “I’m always the epitome of cool.”

Scott laughs and shoves you in the shoulder. You shove him back, and just for a moment everything is right in the world.

.

That afternoon you go home and get started on dinner straight away, determined to make it a good one. You’re not a brilliant cook nor absolutely horrible but somewhere solidly in between. Half way through preparing a lasagne you realise that this is your mom’s special recipe for when there was something to celebrate and maybe that’s not really appropriate for the situation.

You finish cooking it in a daze and give it to Malia because she won’t realise how strange you’re being. On the way home you pick up a couple pizzas because your mind is so jittery and scattered that you’d only burn the house down if you tried to cook now.

Your dad gets home not long after you do and you’re not ready for this.

“How was your day?” he asks.

You take the easy out and make a face. “I had double chemistry but no supernatural creatures tried to attack me and no one I know died in mysterious circumstances, so it was a solid eight,” you say.

He smiles wryly and you wonder if it’s the last time you’ll see him looking so unconcerned. To stop yourself from staring dumbly you say, “So yeah. That was my day, how was yours?”

“No suspicious deaths on my side either,” he says. “Apart from that, it was normal.”

You laugh. It’s at least three parts disbelief. _I’m going to die in a year or two_ , you want to say but how do you drop that into a conversation?

Dinner passes in a blur. Your dad can tell something’s up but he doesn’t press the issue. You open your mouth to tell him at least a dozen times but chicken out every single time. When was the last time you saw those laugh lines crinkled up instead of the deep furrows on his forehead, you wonder. When was the last time he sounded more worried about what stunt his idiot son tried to pull off rather than whether you’ve been sneaking out to risk your life fighting psycho werewolves again?

You can’t do it. Just let him have one more evening untainted by stress or bad news, you decide. Just one.

.

.

You dream of Beacon Hills. You dream of old, creaking trees and howling wind. You dream that the very ground itself thirsts for blood. The moon waxes and wanes and waxes again as clouds race across the night sky, twisting and boiling and growing out of nothing only to roll over themselves and disappear back into nothing. Leaves blow across an empty road. Moss grows over gravestones.

.

.

You never do tell your father. You don’t tell Scott either. You don’t tell anyone. You’re seventeen and terrified. There’s the right thing to do and there’s what you do. This isn’t a Venn diagram; the two do not overlap.

The secret itches under your skin. Everyone who knows you can tell.

“Alright kid, spit it out,” your father says to you one night. “What’s happened now? Is it witches? Vampires?”

You force a laugh and roll your eyes. “This isn’t Harry Potter or Twilight, Dad. Everything’s fine.”

And it is fine. It is. As long you don’t say anything it isn’t true. As long as everyone keeps acting like normal, everything is normal.

_Denial_ , you think because you can never shut up, _one of the five stages of accepting terminal according to the Kübler-Ross model_.

.

.

A week passes, then two, then three and your father is back to looking at you with suspicion and disappointment yet you still can’t bring yourself to lay this on him too. _I’m sorry_ , you try to convey with your eyes. But like the boy that cried wolf he just doesn’t believe you anymore.

That night you dream of your grandmother.

( _“A parent should never have to outlive their children,” she had whispered in the car on the way home from your mother’s funeral. Her voice was hoarse even though she hadn’t shed a single tear throughout the ceremony._

_She was_ my mother _, you had wanted to scream. Perhaps your father sensed it because he caught your eye before you could open your mouth. He looked so sad and tired that you pressed your lips together as hard as you could to stop the words from escaping and let your grandmother clutch your arm so tightly that the bruises would remain for weeks._

_She’d died only a few months later. You were young. You hadn’t understood then but you think you do now._ )

You wake up with wet cheeks.

.

.

For a long time you can’t decide whether or not you want to read up on everything there is to know about this disease that will take your life. Many nights, sitting up in your room with all the lights off so your father thinks you’re asleep while you slowly drive yourself up the walls, you open your browser, type in the long medical terms and press enter. Sometimes you click on the first link. Sometimes you click on them all, opening tab after tab only to close the whole window without reading a thing.

After awhile you do it less often and finally not at all.

_Seventeen_ , you whisper to yourself in the dark and for the first time since Scott was bitten you feel like a child. You’ll make it to eighteen; it’s only a few months away. Nineteen you’re less sure about. Twenty seems too far away to even think about.

.

.

“Stiles!”

You jump in your seat. “Huh?”

Ms Sorenson raises her eyebrows judgementally at you. “To the board. Sometime time today if you don’t mind.”

“Right,” you say flatly. You do as she says with an exaggerated sigh. Math has never been difficult for you so even though you haven’t done your homework in weeks, the problem is not hard to solve.

When you return to your seat Scott gives you a questioning look and you shrug apathetically before going back to chewing on your pencil and staring out the window. The bell rings not long after. As you collect your books Scott says, “Dude, are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course. I’m fine,” you answer automatically. Everything you do these days is on automatic because if you stop to think about it you won’t remember how to act normally.

“Are you sure?” Scott asks. “Cause you haven’t been looking so good lately. Are you getting those nightmares again?”

You swallow hard and look away. “Maybe,” you say. “I mean, I might have had one or two. It’s not a big deal.”

“Stiles you’ve been out of it for weeks,” Scott says.

He opens his mouth to say more but you cut across him. “Let it go, Scott, we’ve got an Econ test worth 25%. You don’t want to be distracted.”

.

.

You dream that the nemeton is a lighthouse made of glossy black stone with a wailing police siren that sounds like Lydia’s scream. In the dark all kinds of horrors slink towards Beacon Hills. You know they’re there but you can’t see a thing.

You dream that you’re tied to all the people you care about by coloured pieces of string. One by one they snap until there aren’t enough to keep you tethered to the ground and you drift away into the sky.

You dream that you’re drowning. You dream that you’re suffocating. You dream that you’re hanging from a noose and you know in your heart that the branch you swing from belongs to the Nemeton.

You dream of Scott walking away with Deucalion, leaving you alone in the rain.

You dream of bruises blooming over your skin. Black and blue patterns edged in lighter purple-red. You dream of your flesh splitting apart like an overripe peach, blood welling up and pouring out in rivers of dark, unhealthy red. Your bones crack open and the stench from their rotten cores is the same smell as death. Leeches and maggots crawl out of their jagged ends, feasting themselves on the raw meat they find there and worming their way into the parts of your body that aren’t already on display.

You dream of your mother, always your mother. Her smile, her laugh, the way she cupped your face in her palm. But when you wake up you can never recall the image of her face or the exact sound of her laugh.

You dream of Allison and Heather and Tara and Erica and Boyd and everyone that has died in Beacon Hills. Join us, they say. We’re waiting.

.

.

You’ve stared death in the eye before, this shouldn’t be different but it is. It is. There’s a sick feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach that tells you this is the one you won’t walk away from.

.

.

.


	2. Part Two

.

.

“Stiles, you can’t keep putting this off. We’ve already waited for far longer than I’m comfortable with,” the oncologist says. You take the phone away from your ear and her voice becomes tinny and faint. “In order to get the best results we need to begin...” The words become indecipherable as you place the phone gently on the table.

You take a deep breath, and then another. “I’m going to be okay,” you say quietly but you don’t believe it. You press your hands over your mouth and squeeze your eyes closed. It doesn’t make you feel any less like a gentle breeze could blow you apart. Very carefully, you hang up the phone and stand up and leave the room.

.

.

You don’t remember exactly what you said to set Lydia off. It was something along the lines of how maybe if she spent less time admiring her reflection she would’ve already learned to control the banshee thing, you think. It’s only her reaction that catches your attention.

“I don’t know what the hell has gotten into you lately but I’ve had enough. I’ll be here when you decide to pull the stick out of your ass,” she snaps before flouncing off.

You stare after her, dumbfounded. For someone that can dish out bitchy comments she sure has trouble receiving them. “Someone’s on the rag,” you mutter under your breath.

Malia snarls at you so viciously you think actually she might attack you. The two of you are in one of your off-again phases. They’ve become much more frequent of late and you know the blame lies squarely with you. You’re fairly sure that this time it’s not just a phase though.

“Jesus, _sorry_. Christ, everyone is so touchy today,” you say. No one else at the table will meet your eyes. You push your chair out and say, “I’ve lost my appetite.”

You should go apologise to Lydia but you don’t. You should stop pushing your friends away but you don’t. You should do a lot of things that you don’t.

.

.

The grocery store is nearly empty. You’re the only one in the freezer section, frowning down at the dozens of different types of cheese before you. Farmer’s cheese, tasty cheese, Colby, vintage, epicure. You have no idea what half of them are but you like to switch it around every now and then for variety.

Old hit music from nearly a decade ago plays softly in the background and you’re caught up in half-formed memories of your mother. Nothing concrete, just glimpses. Her swishing skirt as she twirled around the kitchen. The shape of her silhouette sitting on a park bench from across the playground. The way she’d hum and tap her fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the music on the radio as she drove. Walking through some sort of fair, holding her hand in your small sticky one and beaming up at her as the lights from the rides lit up her face in an every changing array of colours.

You get the last few items on your list. It’s not much; cheese, milk, Cheerios, sandwich bread, soap and muesli bars. You head for the express checkout and unload your basket. The girl there doesn’t even look up from her conversation with her co-worker.

“Excuse me,” you say with thinly veiled annoyance. This is why you prefer the self-checkout. “Hey, miss.” She continues to ignore you. “Look, I don’t know what your problem is but I’m a paying customer here.” You turn to her friend to appeal but it’s like you’re not even there.

The manager doesn’t acknowledge you, nor do any of the other people in the store. It’s starting to unnerve you so you abandon your groceries and take your jeep straight down to the station. No one says anything when you head straight through to the back, and it’s not because they all know you.

Your dad has his head down, frowning thoughtfully at the photographs laid out on his desk. You watch for a minute, scared to say anything. A knock on the door makes the both of you look around.

“Come in,” your dad calls.

It’s Parrish. He says, “I’ve got those files you were asking about.”

“Great, just leave them on the desk.”

Parrish says something else but the whole conversation is becoming indistinct.

“Dad,” you say. “Dad!”

They keep talking.

You wake up with a gasp.

.

.

 “I’m coming, Catwoman,” you tell Erica’s grave. “But first I gotta make my mark.”

.

.

A pounding bass thrums in your chest and people press in on all sides. You don’t remember whose party this is and you don’t particularly care. The room is spinning and alcohol is supposed to make you relax but you feel more out of place than ever. Standing alone at the edge of the room in your ratty t-shirt and jeans that don’t cling like a second skin, you couldn’t stand out more if you tried.

How is it that you can face down alpha werewolves and ancient demons but you can’t even interact normally with people your own age? Well that’s okay. You don’t want to impress these stupid kids anyway; you just want to forget your problems for a night.

Still, it makes something burn in your gut the way they look at you as though one glance tells them everything they need to know, like they’ve judged you and found you wanting. You hate them for making you feel ashamed of yourself and you hate yourself for letting them make you feel ashamed of yourself.

“Fucking jerks,” you mutter under your breath, pushing your way outside.

A hand to your chest sends you stumbling backwards. Beer sloshes down your shirt and someone says, “Watch it, dickhead.”

“What the fuck?” you demand, looking at the guy who pushed you. He’s tall, blond, and athletic in a way that makes him interchangeable for Jackson or Brett or any of the rich, asshole jocks you’ve known.

“What did you call me, loser,” the guy demands with a stupid arrogant smirk while his friends watch and grin.

But the joke is on them today because you feel like you don’t fit in your skin, on edge and too restless by half. If he wants a fight, he fucking found one. “I said get the fuck out of my way you cock-sucking piece of shit.”

“You’re going to pay for that,” the guy snarls, his face twisting with anger and embarrassment.

You laugh in his face and throw the first punch.

.

Scott’s knuckles are white and his mouth is a grim line as he drives you home. Finally he can’t hold himself back any longer and demands furiously, “What the hell is going on with you?”

You shrug and roll your head across the headrest to lean against the car window and stare up at the starry sky. The glass is cold against your forehead and it anchors you to reality. _I’m still here_ , you remind yourself. Out loud you don’t say a word.

“God _damn_ it, Stiles,” Scott snarls and he thumps his fist against the steering wheel.

The rest of the drive back to Scott’s house is spent in silence. Your head is still spinning pleasantly and it feels like nothing exists outside the little glass and metal box of the car. The engine purrs reassuringly below you and it doesn’t matter that Scott’s anger is practically a tangible thing. Here in this moment you are content.

.

Scott watches you wipe a damp cloth over the blood crusting your cheek, watches as you fight back a wince at the cold-rough sensation against the open scrape there. He hasn’t said more than three sentences to you since he angrily dragged you away from the fight and manhandled you into his mom’s car.

When you’re done you rinse the towel out and start on your busted knuckles. Scott sighs heavily and you glance up briefly without stopping your work.

“I just—I wish you’d talk to me,” he says tiredly, looking pale and washed out under the bathroom’s fluorescent lighting. He opens his mouth, looking like he wants to say more but instead he just rubs the worried creases in his forehead and leaves you there.

You finish cleaning and dressing your injuries and stay there sitting on the edge of the bathtub, brushing your fingers over your bandaged knuckles. It had been so satisfying driving your fists into someone else’s body. Blood singing in your veins and adrenaline quieting your mind, narrowing your focus like even a double dose of Adderall can’t. Even when you’d been hit so hard you literally saw stars the pain was just another reminder of how beautifully, agonizingly alive you were.

You stand up and shake out your limbs, bounce on your toes and roll your neck, ready for another ten rounds. It’s no surprise all the werewolves think violence is the answer when it feels like this.

Movement in the corner of your eye makes you turn but it’s just your reflection. The boy you see in the mirror is a stranger. There are deep bags under his wild, bloodshot eyes, a purpling bruise blooming across the pale skin of his jaw and up towards his split lip and an abrasion on his too-sharp, too-prominent cheekbone. The tilt of his chin says _come at me_ , and he stands as though braced for a blow or ready to throw one.

No wonder your father looks as though he can’t recognise you anymore. You don’t either.

You smile and trace a finger over your straight white teeth with something like surprise. You’d thought you’d see too many sharp fangs that drip with blood from where they split your gums open. But it’s not the nogitsune, it’s not a trick; this is what you are now. It is and yet it isn’t. You don’t know anymore and you don’t care.

When you go back to Scott’s room the light is already off and he’s only a dark shape under the blanket. You crawl into the bed with him as you haven’t for years. “I’m sorry,” you whisper to his back. He doesn’t respond; maybe he’s asleep or maybe you’re running out of chances.

As you drift off you think you hear him say, “You’ve never shut me out like this before Stiles. You’re scaring me and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to be a good friend to you anymore.”

You’re probably already dreaming.

.

.

A pile of college applications sits untouched on your desk. They’ve been there for weeks, collecting dust and coffee cup stains.

You’d had dreams, once. Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Yale, Colombia. You never decided what you wanted to study; you’re interested in anything and everything. But wherever you went and whatever you did, you wanted to be the best. Now it doesn’t matter.

Every time you see them you’re reminded of when you put them there, so full of hope and optimism; every time the unfairness of it all makes you lose yourself to bouts of anger or depression. Finally you throw them out in a fit of rage. You don’t cry but you want to. Dreams are for people with futures and it’s time you let yours go.

.

.

“I thought we got past this,” your dad says angrily when you finally get home, sometime near four o’clock in the morning, “All the lies and the secrets, coming home with injuries you won’t explain.”

You think of him in the hospital, just as furious and desperate. _Dad, son_ , he had said, pointing first to himself and then to you. But those appellations won’t last forever. _Alone, dead_ , you think. That will be the two of you soon enough.

“I’m going to bed,” you say when you find your voice.

“No. You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to just walk away from this conversation,” your dad says. He reaches out to grab your shoulder but you smack his hand away with a casual violence you didn’t used to be so comfortable with.

“Good night,” you say mechanically, ignoring the look on his face. Then you turn your back on him and go upstairs to your room. You don’t turn the light on as you undress with shaking hands and fall into bed. It takes a long time before you fall asleep.

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Rain is pouring down in sheets as you race through the streets of Beacon Hills as fast as you dare, headlights bouncing off the layer of water collecting on the road and making the raindrops glow golden in the darkness. Even with your windscreen wipers on the fastest setting you can barely see where you’re going before you’re already past it. Thunder crackles, drowning out the roar of your Jeep’s engine.

You fishtail around a corner, knuckles clenched white around the steering wheel. For a moment your headlights illuminate the shocked face of a hunter before your car smashes into him, sending his body tumbling over the hood and into the windscreen. A spider web of cracks explodes across the glass in front of your face and you flinch violently. That’s going to be a bitch to claim on insurance, you think nonsensically as you slam on the brakes, tucking your bat under your arm and opening the door almost before the car stops moving.

The downpour drenches you in seconds. You sprint to the edge of the building the hunter was guarding, a warehouse of some sort. Under the eaves you’re slightly sheltered from the rain but it hardly matters since you’re already soaked to the bone. The hinges of the door are rusty and stiff, complaining loudly even as you try to ease them open quietly. Your heart pounds faster in your chest and your hands tremble.

Luckily your attempts at caution were unnecessary; the drumming of rain on the corrugated iron roof echoes deafeningly around the inside of the building and the two hunters there are intent on Derek anyway. He’s slumped against the wall, smeared with blood, eyes unfocussed. Yet again, you think with a mixture of irony and anger.

One of the hunters slams his cattle prod into Derek’s stomach and the werewolf doubles over, coughing up blood. He looks like shit but you’ve seen him worse. The man crouches down to question Derek as the other hunter stands off at right angles, gun trained on the werewolf; an interrogator and a cover man. The latter is the immediate problem so you slink over to his side of the warehouse, readjusting your grip on your baseball bat. Your fingers are numb and slippery on the grip but you’ve got a job to do.

The cover man never hears you coming but Derek’s eyes widen as you materialise out of the darkness behind the hunter and slam your bat into his head as hard as you can. The bone gives way with a sickening crunch that you feel rather than hear, and he collapses in a heap. The interrogator sees Derek’s expression and turns around but he’s too close to a werewolf to afford that kind of distraction. Derek is on the man in a second, grabbing him roughly and tearing his throat out with a clawed hand.

For a moment neither of you move. Derek is looking at you as though he’s never see you before. It’s not disgust but something fascinated and hungry. You stare back, shocked that it’s all over so quickly and decisively. Half an hour ago you’d been sitting in your room defacing your history textbook and feeling sorry for yourself. You hadn’t even been aware there was any trouble brewing in this cursed town. You know you’ve been distracted lately, but just how much have you missed?

There’s an urgency in your bones that doesn’t leave you still for long though. You shake your head as though to physically clear it and your wet hair is flung over your face. You push it back, absently noting that your fingers that aren’t shaking anymore. Your skin is still slick with rain but you’re not cold anymore either, blood burning hotly in your veins.

“We have to go. There was a breakout at Eichen House. Scott needs you,” you say.

Derek’s expression sharpens. “Eichen House?” he echoes as he gingerly straightens from where he’d been crouched over the hunter whose throat he clawed apart. “Did Peter escape?”

“I don’t know,” you say but your attention is on the hunters lying crumpled on the ground. The one Derek dealt with is definitely dead but you’re not so sure about the two you hit. You gesture at them. “Do we have to... you know, take care of them?”

Derek says, “No. The Calaveras will clean up their own mess. They don’t want the authorities investigating any more than we do.” He leads the way to your Jeep, favouring his left leg and holding his torso stiffly like maybe he has some broken ribs. You don’t think he shouldn’t even be upright. If you were a better person you’d tell him to go home and rest.

You’re not a better person.

.

.

You share a bottle of tequila and all your problems with your mom. Scott asked you earlier this week why you’ve been going to the cemetery so often. “Getting used to the view,” you told him.

“That’s not funny,” he said.

You said, “I know,” but you were laughing.

When you get home it takes several attempts before your key slides home in the lock. If you have to resort to guiding it in by touch it’s no one’s business but your own. Maybe you shouldn’t have been driving but nobody died for it so what does it matter?

Your dad is sitting at the kitchen table when you stumble through the front door. There’s a tumbler of whiskey in front of him and a bottle with the lid left off right next to it. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

A thick sliver of guilt twists in your gut because it’s not true. Only one of you won’t be able to pick themselves up again tomorrow. You’d hate yourself if you gave a damn about anything other than the slick buzz running down your spine like honey.

“Heeeey Dad,” you slur. It’s obvious you’re wasted but you can’t care right now. What’s one more disappointment on top of all the other ones you’ve heaped on your dad?

He looks at you and it cuts straight to your heart like a knife. For a second you feel a jolt of sobriety. It leaves a sour feeling in your stomach. “Stiles,” he says with more emotion than you can handle.

 Before he can say anything else you say, “Good talk Papa Stilinski, I’m going to bed now. See you in the morning.”

“I feel like I’m losing you, son,” he says as you walk past, his voice raw.

_You are_ , you think. This isn’t what you wanted but you don’t say anything as you make your unsteady way up to your bedroom. You fall onto your bed without getting undressed.

“I think I made a big mistake somewhere along the way, Mom,” you whisper to your ceiling seconds before you pass out.

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.

Moonlight gleams on polished metal. A fast arc downwards. The sound of breaking glass followed by a wailing alarm.

Your breath comes in sharp pants. It’s anger rather than exertion but you’ll change that in short order. You lift the crowbar in your hands and bring it down on the car again and again.

The metal of the body dents and warps until the doors won’t open; you know because you spend ten minutes trying to pry them off the hinges so you get to the inside, destroy that fancy sound system and maybe the alarm while you’re at it. No one will hear, deep in the preserve as you are, but it’s starting to give you a headache.

In the end you jump up on the hood and turn your attention to the windscreen. Shatterproof your ass.

The car is a complete wreck by the time you collapse to the ground, arms trembling and tears streaming down your face. You feel betrayed by your own weak flesh. Your rage still burns as fiercely as ever. You are not finished yet.

How much fuel do you need to set a car on fire? You have two five gallon jerry cans and you’re about to find out.

The night is terrifyingly still. No animals or insects, not even a breeze to make the trees whisper and creak. The only noises you can hear are the crunch of gravel beneath your sneakers and the rhythmic glug-glug-glug of petrol pouring onto distorted metal.

The match flares to life accompanied by the brief scent of burning phosphorus.

“Stiles.”

Your head snaps up and you barely keep yourself from jumping; you hadn’t heard an engine.

It’s Derek. Of course it is. He’s standing at the tree line where the carpark gives way to forest. Always with the dramatic entrances. You and Scott have spent many an hour speculating about whether he does it on purpose or it fate simply decreed that his entire life play out like a tragic, overly violent soap opera.

Well, it’s your turn for drama today. Without looking away from his eyes, you flick the match.

Flames whoosh up and sudden heat sears the skin of your face. You stumble backwards. Before your view is obscured, you see Derek flinch nearly imperceptibly.

“Stiles,” Derek snaps, and you’re not sure if you’re losing time or if he moved at werewolf speed but now he’s at your side, grabbing your arm and pulling you even further from the dancing flames.

“Fuck off,” you mumble, wrenching your arm out of his grip.

As usual Derek pays you no attention. “What the hell,” he demands sharply.

You shove your hands in your pockets and refuse to make eye contact, instead staring at the endlessly shifting flames, mesmerised. A heavy hand comes down on your shoulder, forcibly turning you to face Derek. He says, “What’s gotten into you lately?”

Neither of you are expecting the laughter that bubbles out of your throat, desperate, bitter and hysterical. You’re well aware of how unhinged you sound and so is Derek. He looks wary now and maybe even a little bit concerned but mostly still pissed off.

“What are you doing out here Stiles,” he says without the inflection to turn it into a question.

“It’s pretty obvious,” you say, spreading your hands out to encompass your work. “Why are you here though?”

Derek’s expression has cleared now. He’s irritatingly calm as he says, “Scott called. He’s worried about you, said you haven’t been yourself for a while.”

You snort, “I’m not possessed if that’s what you’re all worried about.”

“I never said that,” Derek says evenly. He casts his eyes to the still-burning vehicle and nods at it. “Whose car is that?”

You shrug like it doesn’t matter. “Some dickbag from school.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Yeah? What did he do to deserve this?”

The words are all but carved onto the inside of your skull with the number of times you’ve replayed them in your head. You shake it off and frown at Derek. “Nothing. I was having a bad day and decided to take anger management tips from Liam.”

“Right,” he says sceptically.

You scuff the ground with your shoe and hunch your shoulders. “Whatever.”

He sighs like he expected nothing better and says, “Time to go home. Where’s your jeep?”

You look at him like he’s an idiot, mostly just to bait him. “At home. How do you think this thing got out here? I drove it, obviously.” You’d had the vague plan to walk out to the highway and hitchhike your way out of Beacon Hills but of course this godforsaken town can’t let you go.

“Of course you did,” Derek says, running a frustrated hand through his hair.

It makes you grin meanly to see you got to him.

.

Instead of taking you home Derek drives you deeper into the preserve. He stops at a tiny car park you don’t recognise and you half-heartedly trail after him to a quiet spot by the river, well off the path. “My dad used to bring me here when I was a kid,” he tells you once you’ve both settled by the bank. He’s sitting on a fallen log and you’re cross-legged on the bare dirt.

You look at him in askance.

Derek just raises an eyebrow and continues, “Our parents didn’t always have the luxury of letting us get over our moods in our own time since it affected our control. When I refused to work through something he’d take me out here and wait until I talked to him about it. Sometimes we’d be here for hours.”

“Are you using your dead family to try to emotionally blackmail me into talking?” you say incredulously.

“That depends,” he says with a slight smile. “Is it working?”

You glare at him venomously. It’s none of his business and if you tell anyone, it’s not going to be him. The two of you stew in silence for a minute.

“I have cancer,” you say. Your heart is racing and your palms are sweaty. You can’t believe you’re actually doing this. As soon as the words escape your mouth you wish you hadn’t let them out but it’s too late now. And maybe it’s a bit of a relief to stop lying about it. “It’s not the kind you get better from. I probably have about a year left now.”

Derek’s eyes widen in surprise.

“Yeah,” you say drily though your shaky tone gives you away. You sigh and lean into the tree to your back. The river burbles quietly and for the first time since you heard the diagnosis you feel something close to peace.

.

Sometime later Derek says, “Don’t ask Scott for the bite.”

You’re half asleep. Only the cold is stopping your from dropping off completely. “Huh?” you say intelligently.

“Don’t ask Scott for the bite.”

You open your eyes enough to squint at him. After a long pause in which your sleep-slow brain struggles to catch up to a conversation you don’t remember starting you say, “I wasn’t going to.”

Derek nods once. “Good.”

The moon bathes him in a dim silvery glow and it’s enough that you can see he looks satisfied. He’s just going to leave it at that. You huff and sit up, glaring at him in irritation. “But now I want to know why you felt the need to bring it up,” you say. Your voice is still rough with sleep. It sounds like sandpaper and feels about as good.

“Do you how cancer works?” Derek says.

“Yeah sure,” you say, trying to dredge up the answer while you talk. To you cancer is cancer. It’s shaved heads and sickness. It’s hospitals and chemotherapy and surgery and radiation. It’s death. “It’s a tumour that starts somewhere in your body and then spreads as it grows. Eventually it takes over or damages your organs or whatever and your body can’t function properly anymore and you die.”

“Not all cancer is lethal,” Derek says.

You scowl. “I know, but mine is.”

“Cancer...” Derek sighs, “Cancer is a disease where the cells of your body replicate more quickly than is normal, and without control. Treatments like chemotherapy thin your blood and make your hair fall out because they target cells that divide rapidly. You don’t want your body’s cells to replicate any faster than normal if you have cancer.” It’s probably the most you’ve heard him say about anything not pertaining to the death and dismemberment of his enemies. Or so it seems anyway.

“And becoming a werewolf makes your cells replicate exponentially faster than normal,” you say slowly. “That’s how you have such fast healing, and muscle recovery, and all that.”

“Yeah,” says Derek. “Even if Scott hadn’t poisoned Gerard with mountain ash the bite still would have killed him.”

It takes a minute to digest all of this. Then you ask, “How do you know so much about it?”

Derek looks a bit wistful. It still surprises you to see him express emotions like a normal person and every time it reminds you again of how deeply he was grieving when you first met him and for so long after. “One of my aunts got cancer. A werewolf. She died within a few weeks of the diagnosis.”

You’re not sure what to say to that but the damp ground has been seeping into your jeans for far too long so after a pause you get to your feet and brush yourself off. “It’s probably about time we returned to civilisation,” you say.

Derek doesn’t say anything but he gets up too and together you go back to his car.

.

.

.

For all that it’d felt good at the time, in the cold light of day you are sick with regret that you told Derek about your disease. You wonder if he’s told Scott yet, or your dad. Maybe he’ll keep his mouth shut, you tell yourself but you don’t believe it. Your stomach twists with nausea and you wonder if it’s from cancer or nerves.

You skip school to avoid Scott and take a bottle of whiskey down to the skate park and sit there watching a couple of guys you know from school. You watch their bodies fly up into the sky and fall back to earth. It looks like freedom. Later in the afternoon when they take a break one of them offers you a joint. You think his name is Anthony, or maybe Adam. He was in your history class last year.

“You look like you need to chill out, man,” he says.

You laugh and say, “Yeah, guess I do.”

It all becomes a blur after that. At one point you’re at the skate park in the thin winter sun, laughing and smoking and drinking and slinging your arm around Anthony and Tim and Brendan like you’re all friends even though you’ve never spoken to them before today. Then later you’re staggering down some street with some people you may or may not know and it’s night time, but only just, and you’re falling into a seedy fast food joint and buying greasy chicken by the bucket.

Even later you’re in the Jungle, in the bathroom, snorting a line of white powder that you think must be cocaine. It burns far worse than the sherbet you snorted in primary school on a dare. “Coke’s for whores,” a man whispers down your spine. You don’t hear him but you feel his words drip through the cracks in your skeleton and you’re dancing and you’re drowning in coloured lights and you’ve never felt this good.

.

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You wake up in a room you don’t recognise with bile in the back of your throat and blood on your knuckles, feeling worse than you’ve ever felt before.

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You wake up at home in your childhood bed and this time you’re coherent enough to be terrified of all the things you remember doing, and all the things you don’t. It’s seven thirty and you look outside at the pale horizon and you don’t know if it’s morning or evening. There’s an itch at the back of your mind saying you’re late for something but you can’t remember what. SUN 08-11, your watch reads. You don’t remember what day you left home and started this mess but it was a school day, so Friday at least.

There’s an unfamiliar set of clothes crumpled on your floor, the ones you wore home, and you try not to wonder who they belong to. You remember kissing someone, a feeling like pop rocks burning across your skin wherever their hands trailed, and peeling off their shirt, and helping them peel off yours. When you woke up you were wearing nothing but your briefs. Your phone was gone, and your wallet. Maybe they were still in the pocket of your jeans, wherever they ended up.

You wonder if you'd had sex. Surely you'd be able to tell if you had. There'd be signs. You'd feel different. Surely you'd know somehow.

A flash of memory: a grungy bathroom, a line of white powder and a rough whisper down your spine, “Coke’s for whores.” You shiver. You need to check in with your father but before anything you need a shower.

Your father comes up the stairs as you stagger down the hallway feeling thin and stretched out as though your spirit is fading away, barely tied to your flesh. You feel like all your sins are written on your skin for anyone to see and you want to cringe away from his gaze but he only glances at you coolly.

“Look who’s finally awake,” he grunts.

You wonder if that means it’s evening. You think of your reflection in a cracked mirror, nose burning, and eyes streaming red. Can he see how far you’ve strayed? How out of your depth you are? But he’s not acting as though anything is wrong, not more than usual for the past couple months. It strikes a discordant note in you. He should be furious with you. You left without warning and stayed away for days without word. Even when you came back you snuck in and didn’t tell him.

Perhaps this is what him giving up on you looks like. Not disappointment but indifference.

“Have you talked to Derek recently?” you ask casually. Discounting aborted arguments you’ve barely spoken to your father in anything other than passing for weeks, maybe longer. Casual is probably unachievable between the two of you at this point.

Sure enough, your dad stops dead in his tracks and eyes you warily. “No,” he says. “Should I have?”

You shrug and turn away, “Guess not. I’m going to go have a shower.” You think of a different bathroom with graffiti scribbled all over the walls and a flickering halogen light.

Maybe your father has no idea you were gone for nearly two days. Maybe he didn’t notice because he works so much or because he’s become so used to you disappearing whenever you feel like it and not answering your phone. But maybe he did notice and he just doesn’t care anymore. You don’t want to know the answer.

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As soon as you’re out of the shower you call Scott.

He picks up on the first ring. When was the last time you did the same for him? You don’t even remember. The night of the breakout at Eichen House he’d called you eleven times before you answered. You swore to yourself that it wouldn’t happen again; he’d never have to ring you in the first place because you were with him every step of the way. But that was three weeks ago and nothing has changed.

And still, Scott picks up on the first ring. “Stiles, man, I’ve been trying to get a hold of you for ages, where have you been?” he says. “And why are you using the landline?”

“Has Derek said anything to you?” you say in lieu of answering. You don’t feel guilty.

A slight pause. “About what?” Scott asks. “I haven’t spoken to him in a couple days. Why? Did something happen?”

“No,” you say, “Nothing important.” You hang up. He calls back five times before you leave the phone off the hook.

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.

You go over to Derek’s loft and bang your fist against the giant metal door until he answers. When he opens up, you don’t even give him a chance to say anything before you demand, “Why haven’t you told anyone?”

He raises an eyebrow and says, “It’s not my secret to tell.”

You’re so angry you want to hit him, to overturn everything in the loft and smash it to pieces. The only thing that stops you is that you think he might just let you. He’d watch calmly and then when you’re done say something stupid like, do you feel better now? Either that or he’d stop you effortlessly with his werewolf strength and you hate how helpless that makes you feel.

So instead you turn on your heel and storm out of there. Just before you reach the elevator Derek calls your name.

“ _What_ ,” you snap viciously.

“Why are you so angry? Did you want me to tell someone?” he says.

You punch the wall hard enough that you feel a bone break. It doesn’t do a thing to abate your temper. You’re sick to death of your weak fucking bones. “I didn’t want you to tell a goddamn soul,” you snarl, and you wonder what he hears in your heartbeat. Are you lying? Even you don’t know.

Derek frowns and takes a step out of his apartment towards you. “Stiles,” he says, looking concerned.

It only serves to ratchet your fury higher. You don’t know why you feel like this, only that you have no outlet for your rage and it feels like it’s about to tear your apart. “Leave me the hell alone,” you shout at him, and press the button for the elevator doors to close.

This isn’t what you wanted. The stupidest thing you’ve done in your life, and it was for nothing. Derek never intended to spill your secret at all. And why would he have? You don’t know what had you so convinced he’d go running to tell Scott or your dad. You’re a goddamn idiot. You came here looking for validation, some sort of excuse for your mistakes. But you have no one to blame but yourself. Your choices were all your own.

The other night with Derek you’d felt better than you have for a long time, but now you’re just as scared and angry and confused as ever. Maybe that’s the part of the problem. Maybe you’d come here secretly hoping to find that elusive sense of peace but you haven’t and you can’t even put that on Derek because he promised you nothing.

You don’t know. You don’t know anything anymore. You lost sight of what you were doing a while ago and you don’t know how to find your way back.

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.

You go to Scott’s house after that. The two of you sit cross legged on his bed facing each other just like you did when you were children.

“Talk to me Stiles,” Scott begs, desperate and unbearably gentle, “What’s going on with you?”

You look at him, then you look out the window. There are no answers in the overcast sky but you’ve put this off long enough. You look down at your fingers picking at the threads of Scott’s comforter. You’re really going to do this. You say, “I have cancer.”

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End file.
